Issue 7 - Available NOW!
"OPV will probably never outperform inorganic PV cells in performance and lifetime. But their low cost, ease of processing, flexibility and usability under varying lighting conditions will earn OPV a rightful place in the overall PV market. Exercises such as these also illustrate how the improvements of these devices have become a global exercise..." -
Jef Poortmans, Department Director Solar and Organic Technologies, imec
Download Your Copy Now!
It's FREE and only takes a couple of minutes.
In This Issue
Most people no longer ask whether PV will be a success; there is little doubt about that anymore. The question is now rather which forms of PV (i.e., technologies and system types) will be successful.
For decades, the holy grail for solar energy has been meaningful competitiveness with conventional grid-based (i.e., fossil fuel) power. But as the PV technology base expands and we reach the economic “tipping point” for cost-effective solar power, is the world poised for a paradigm shift in terms of grid-based energy?
How new materials offering increases in energy density will leverage the remaining fixed cost associated with solar, and how flexible, environmentally robust cells will enable product-level innovation.
The economic equilibrium of the solar energy sector has undergone a jarring adjustment over the past year. The frenzy of production capacity additions has abated, as the demand for PV modules has not kept up with the prodigious output from the factories and has suffered due to regional policy perturbations, pushing industrywide inventory into the gigawatts and causing the price of panels to drop precipitously. As solar manufacturers either slow down or stop their factory construction ramps, the strategic focus has shifted across the value chain
Why research into novel concepts of photovoltaic energy conversion must continue.
During the past decade, researchers have steadily improved the efficiency of organic photovoltaic cells. The consensus is that there is still much room for improvement, and that the threshold for widespread, commercial use will be reached in the coming years.
Challenges in realizing organic photovoltaics’ potential, and the introduction of specific work in this field.
The screen-printed Al-BSF silicon solar cell has dominated photovoltaic technology for the last 20 years. And indeed it is a great success story that this quite simple cell structure was boosted by plenty of evolutionary steps to remarkable cell efficiencies and excellent productivity. However, the potential for further increases in efficiency and cost reduction will soon saturate.
The sequence from lab development to pilot development of metal-wrap-through technology, including an outlook for industrial production and further efficiency gains.
Extreme fluctuations in demand on the PV market challenge both PV system manufacturers and the supplier industry. Who can possibly keep up with the “killer cycles for the plant engineering industry”?
Commercialization of CdTe solar cell technology has been dominated by First Solar, established in 1999 using CdTe technology developed by Solar Cells Inc. As the first to demonstrate the “economy of scale” utilizing high-speed/high-throughput manufacturing processes, their success has spawned several competitors who are now close to bringing large manufacturing facilities online.
A description of the economic facts and environmental profile that will support a significant market share of CdTe thin film photovoltaic technology.
Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) provides a clear path for the continued cost reduction of solar power generation. The use of concentration enables the manufacturers of solar power plants to reduce the semiconductor content and cost of their systems while maintaining equal or higher power output. One of the key design challenges that CPV system designers are faced with is the impact the heat − resulting from the concentration − will have on the performance of the photovoltaic cells.
A description of the system features and performance of a floating CPV system being implemented on a reservoir belonging to Mekorot, the Israeli Water Utility Company.
Irrespective of technology, increasing solar cell power conversion efficiency plays a critical role in reducing the cost of PV electricity. Higher-efficiency modules, resulting from higher-efficiency cells, reduce the cost of installation, or balance of system (BoS) costs. This has important ramifications for equipment suppliers.
Offering a broad portfolio of proven fluid management, high-performance materials and substrate handling solutions, Entegris solves the contamination, repeatability and process efficiency challenges faced in your manufacturing environment.
A review of the technology and current status of specific fast spatial ALD tools that can be used in PV manufacturing.
New approaches with deposition process and gas showerhead design for fabricating Si-HJ solar cell, compared with Si-TF solar module manufacturing.
Obviously, PV manufacturing uses physical processes similar to those used in IC manufacturing. However, it may not be obvious which manufacturing methods and factory systems used in IC are also a good fit for PV manufacturing.
Why faulty business decisions can have catastrophic impacts on business sustainability in PV manufacturing.
User login
Search
Solar Energy News
Syndicate
In Association With
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|